|
|
Article: On the lower frequencies: rethinking the Black Power movement.
- Article from:
- Harper's Magazine
- Article date:
- December 1, 2006
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2006 Harper's Magazine Foundation. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
|
Discussed in this essay:
Waiting 'til the Midnight Hour: A Narrative History of Black Power in America, by Peniel E. Joseph. Henry Holt and Company. 399 pages. $27.50. The Black Panthers, by Stephen Shames. Aperture. 152 pages. $35.
In the forty years since Stokely Carmichael first chanted "Black Power!" at a Mississippi freedom march, the Black Power movement has largely been understood as the alter ego of civil rights, its quick-to-anger doppelganger. Whereas the civil rights movement was devoted to the spirit of nonviolence, Black Power was drawn to the cult of the gun. Whereas civil rights demonstrated that unlettered sharecroppers in the rural ...